“Stop there!” said Moreau. “I have three children, and I can make no promises.”
“Never mind, never mind,” said Madame Clapart to her son, casting a reproachful glance at Moreau. “Your uncle Cardot—”
“I have no longer an uncle Cardot,” replied Oscar, who related the scene at the rue de Vendome.
Madame Clapart, feeling her legs give way under the weight of her body, staggered to a chair in the dining-room, where she fell as if struck by lightning.
“All the miseries together!” she said, as she fainted.
Moreau took the poor mother in his arms, and carried her to the bed in her chamber. Oscar remained motionless, as if crushed.
“There is nothing left for you,” said Moreau, coming back to him, “but to make yourself a soldier. That idiot of a Clapart looks to me as though he couldn’t live three months, and then your mother will be without a penny. Ought I not, therefore, to reserve for her the little money I am able to give? It was impossible to tell you this before her. As a soldier, you’ll eat plain bread and reflect on life such as it is to those who are born into it without fortune.”
“I may get a lucky number,” said Oscar.
“Suppose you do, what then? Your mother has well fulfilled her duty towards you. She gave you an education; she placed you on the right road, and secured you a career. You have left it. Now, what can you do? Without money, nothing; as you know by this time. You are not a man who can begin a new career by taking off your coat and going to work in your shirt-sleeves with the tools of an artisan. Besides, your mother loves you, and she would die to see you come to that.”
Oscar sat down and no longer restrained his tears, which flowed copiously. At last he understood this language, so completely unintelligible to him ever since his first fault.